Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin hits $10,000

bloomberg.com

261–270 of 389 posts

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's how it started. But as the adoption increases and price skyrockets, more people will understand the value of the concept of decentralization.

If the value prop of Bitcoin is that it is a store of value comparable to gold (which is now what it is being sold as as far as I can tell), it doesn't need to skyrocket in price. It needs to hold value during a recession. How in the world is that going to happen when so many people holding it right now are speculators looking to make a buck? They will flee and the price will tank. How is that a store of value?

The truth is, nobody really knows what is driving the price up. It’s not the DNMs, the high price and fees are a PITA for them. Could be artificial pump via USDT. Could be individuals or even nations under financial sanctions dumping cash into the markets. Could be speculators in Western markets. Could be people in countries with unstable currencies looking to hedge their losses. We know all of these are factors - unless tethers are actually backed 1:1 by USD - but due to the decentralized and pseudonymous nature of the currency there is little way to know what the prevailing reasons are unless and until it all comes tumbling down. Gox blew up in 2013 and the full story only came to light (well, sort of) this year.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#262
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem is that Satoshi's coins are watched like a hawk. Satoshi can't liquidate any of them, or even really move them without causing an immediate reaction in the community. Exchanges might halt trading, whilst it would immediately give away his or her identity. If the price of bitcoin doesn't crash following a coin movement, Satoshi's life is most certainly at risk. If it does, then the coins are worth not…

Satoshi is almost certainly dead. No living person could resist the temptation to talk about their creation of a 100 billion dollar phenomenon. Two plausible candidates who died at about the right time are Hal Finney and Dave Kleiman.

There was nothing stopping Satoshi re-joining and buying back 100,000 cheap coins once there was enough transactions to hide the fact that it wasn't him.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bitfinex has injected millions of dollars of fake money into the ecosystem" please, explain what money is "fake" and what "injected" and "ecosystem" mean.

Bitfinex controls Tether, a single source cryptocurrency supposedly backed by and pegged to the US dollar. The market cap of Tether has risen $188 million dollars to $678 million in one month: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ If Tether is what they say it is, this can only come from investments of US dollars. Ie nearly $400 million dollars of investment in one month. On November 21 Tether announced a hack…

Tether announced a hack in which they lost 30 million USDT, not USD. As they don't plan to redeem those USDT to USD, in no sense Tether lost 30 million USD. As far as I can tell, Tether lost nothing.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one likes to talk about that though, they like to demonize bitcoin which actually does something gold could never do. Just playing devils advocate, but you can't replicate/duplicate gold. On the other hand I could create 21M cryptocoins on a blockchain (calling them Bitcoin2 or even just Bitcoin if it pleases). I can make them function identically, similarly or more efficiently than Bitcoin. I can create a new bl…

You say 21M "cryptocoins" but you couldn't, however, create 21M BTC arbitrarily. As long as that number stays the same (it isn't completely immutable) then BTC has real scarcity - making it a store of value, like gold. Throw in some additional properties that BTC has that gold does not, and an argument can be made that BTC is at least a decent value store. Even at $100,000/BTC, Bitcoin would still have a ~1/5th of th…

But there have been multiple bitcoin forks— bitcoin cash essentially doubled the amount of bitcoins in circulation.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#265
post #2

Makes you wonder what triggers people have for themselves to sell their 'stash'. 10 fold increases in a year won't last for very long.

The true believers really imagine it will replace paper currency. So there is no need to sell.

This is the correct answer. Also, many of them have sold previously for reasons and lived/ live with severe regret. This is how HODLers are born.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#266
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`100k puts the market at cap at a trillion, it’s not that crazy if you remember that Gold is several times that`. Similar things heard during every irrational bubble. I believe people often trot out the 'actual worthlessness' of fiat currency, to support a misguided idea that btc must be the democratic antidote which will free countless millions from the financial enslavement of the global financial machine. Currency…

>Currency is currency BECAUSE its sponsored by government. And the payments system only works because you are indemnified. By the FDIC. By Chase Credit Cards. That is, the evil banks. How so for btc? I'm not sure that's true. What makes a currency is it's usage. If enough people agree to the value of something, it's irrelevant whether a government sponsors it. You see this all the time with small towns using local "c…

That's only the positive side of it.

For all this talk of inequality, why don't poor all over the world just throw their national fiat currencies under the bus and start all over from scratch? Sure doing this every few decades should ideally reset the wealth counter to 0 for most of the top 1%.

That is where fiat currencies come in. Because you don't want extreme situations in either case. Do you seriously want a certain large section of world population holding the entire global financial ecosystem at gunpoint and dictate its terms?

Pay x% taxes as we demand or we fork the blockchain and reset it all to 0.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say 21M "cryptocoins" but you couldn't, however, create 21M BTC arbitrarily. As long as that number stays the same (it isn't completely immutable) then BTC has real scarcity - making it a store of value, like gold. Throw in some additional properties that BTC has that gold does not, and an argument can be made that BTC is at least a decent value store. Even at $100,000/BTC, Bitcoin would still have a ~1/5th of th…

But there have been multiple bitcoin forks— bitcoin cash essentially doubled the amount of bitcoins in circulation.

Bitcoin Cash is BCH. Bitcoin is BTC. There will only be 21M BTC. As far as I know, there will also be 21M BCH. But BCH != BTC.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what bailing out means. It was a transfer of wealth from taxpayers and money-balance holders to Wall St banks, the US gov't and a few select private corporations. Now I don't mean to be patronizing, but it is useful for us to ask ourselves, "how were we convinced that this was desirable?"

No amount of debate over the validity of the 2008-2009 financial crisis and resolution makes bitcoin any less of a fiat currency.

Fiat means by decree, or order. Typically we mean by government when we use this word.

Essentially, the government creates it by law and then forces you to use it.

I'm struggling to see how this applies to bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say 21M "cryptocoins" but you couldn't, however, create 21M BTC arbitrarily. As long as that number stays the same (it isn't completely immutable) then BTC has real scarcity - making it a store of value, like gold. Throw in some additional properties that BTC has that gold does not, and an argument can be made that BTC is at least a decent value store. Even at $100,000/BTC, Bitcoin would still have a ~1/5th of th…

But there have been multiple bitcoin forks— bitcoin cash essentially doubled the amount of bitcoins in circulation.

Only if people use it.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is a fiat currency Please expand. Which state is forcing people to pay their taxes in Bitcoin, and/or authorizing it as legal tender?

The key quality of a fiat currency is that it is spun out of air without intrinsic value.

Currency is a medium to exchange value(Work or outcome of work). Value can be created/destroyed from/to something(Generally work), currency is just a 'medium' to trade the value.

Currency itself has to be created out of thin air.

Post reply on HN